The gender graph is also interesting to point out in light of the recent PEW Internet report indicating that women are the majority of Internet users. Either there is a difference in the sort of thing people search for (No WAY!) or perhaps women also buy based on female photos and lead stories. But if that were true then People and Vogue would mostly have women on the cover. A clear case of gender in advertising bias. Um….er…. So much for Marlon Brando. Zeitgeist backs this theory up as well in that while Internet searchers may be mostly female, but like women’s suffrage, there is no gender loyalty and everyone thinks for themselves regardless. (Although men apparently don’t search for men much despite the PEW report never mentioning sex in their report).

The good news is last year they were viewed on AdAge and other sites removing the opportunity to upsell or convert the buyers to being actual GoDaddy customers.

Then, after I viewed (ahem) several times I was greeted with the Pop-up at the top. So much for a positive brand impression. Apparently sex DOES sell public relations, and then greed reduces the value of the brand yet again. Go figure.

This post is *not* an opinion piece on politics. The world has plenty of those on current events.

Rather I wanted to highlight a social network diagram in the Houston Chronicle today attributed to Alberto Cuadra. The diagram (low res photo at left) diagrams "The Abramoff connection" and uses a combination of visual elements.

For main characters like Mr. Abramoff he gets a large photo in the sun. Clearly the Jack Abramoff image is the dominant visual element. The next largest element up and to the right from Jack is Tom Delay. But definitely a smaller picture than Jack the center of the diagram.

All other players are separated by dotted lines and every element has a gear, like machinery, background on it. There is no attempt to indicate interaction with the gears, I guess just to indicate they are part of the political machinery.

Individuals where he did not have a photo, or chose not to use one perhaps to reduce their apparent significance are indicated by a standing robot-looking man. Interestingly, *groups* of individuals are also represented by this same graphic such as "other congress members". My interpretation of this is simply that their role as a group was on par with the role of that other individual as an individual.

The money, which is what they teach you to follow in most crime novels, is apparently mostly from Indian tribes running casinos. Those tribes, despite their dominant role, are indicated in the diagram by three buildings of varying sizes similar to a SIMS building icon. The same building icon, of the same size unlike the varying photo sizes, is used to reference other lobbying companies and the strategy group including public relations firms Grassroots Interactive and Capital Campaign Strategies.

The dotted lines connecting the elements are confusing, but that is a known challenge with social network diagrams and I think the author does a good job except for the flamboyant boat connection. I’ll chalk that last one up to social commentary. By the artist of course.